The sun rose on the lake outside Craigavon count centre when Sinn Féin’s Chris Hazzard won the South Down seat on Friday morning – though the result was never in doubt from the previous evening.
Despite having the lowest vote share of any winning MP in the last Westminster poll, Hazard beamed on the victor’s podium after securing a majority of more than 9,000 against the SDLP’s Colin McGrath – and taking 43.5 per cent of the vote.
This was a 12.7 per cent increase from 2019, when there was a narrow margin of just over 1,600 votes between the Sinn Féin incumbent and his then SDLP rival – and reflected some of the Sinn Féin voting patterns across the North on election night with the retention of the party’s seven seats.
Hazzard polled 19,698 votes against Mc Grath’s 10,418 and in his victory speech said that being returned as an MP for the third time “demonstrated that elections are fought on the ground and not on Twitter”.
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“I think this is a great endorsement of a record of delivery and for that I have to thank every single Sinn Féin member and activist in South Down who walked the highways, walked the lanes – not just over the last six weeks but the last six years and for many, many years beyond that,” he said.
“This is about working for everybody, this is about creating positive change, about delivering the Narrow Water bridge, about fixing our health service, about fixing our education service.”
In a constituency once an SDLP stronghold, McGrath expressed his disappointment but said it was an improvement on the Assembly election result two years ago.
“It shows within the constituency of South Down there is still a will to take the SDLP view,” he told his supporters.
The DUP candidate, Diane Forsythe, an MLA considered as one of the party’s rising stars, trailed in third place with 7,349 votes.
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